Interfaith Relationships II

I posted on this subject Monday, but I suspect that most people who started to read that post thought they were going to read about dating/marrying outside one's own faith. There was very little, if anything, about that; it was more about friendships. In all fairness, I think that there is a lot of confusion about interfaith relationships in terms of dating and marriage, also.

I'm not going to try to tell you who you should or should not date. Miriam made that mistake (God smote her with leprosy). I will say this, though: The axiom is "opposites attract;" however, lasting relationships are built on common ground. If you really want your relationship to work, you need to sit down and decide what is important to you, and get with somebody who feels that those things are important, also. If your religion is important to you, then you really should be with someone, not only of the same religion, but someone to whom religion is important, also.

A lot of people talk about both interfaith and interracial marriage saying that the Bible forbids both. The only reference I've ever been able to find, as far as interracial marriage, is in Numbers 12, which I referenced above; Moses' sister Miriam was smote with leprosy because she dared to criticise Moses for marrying an Ethiopian woman. Of course, he married Zipporah before God gave Moses the law... As far as interfaith marriage, I think that there is a better Old Testament scripture on that subject, but the only one I can come up with this morning is Exodus 34:17, but I think that makes the point that God didn't want the Israelites marrying outside the faith, because He knew that, at least in some instances, the Israelite men would wind up worshipping the gods of their pagan wives.

Apostle Paul writes a little bit differently in 1 Corinthians 7. He says that if a 'believer' (a Christian) is married to an 'unbeliever,' that is not a good enough reason to divorce. I don't think that Paul is suggesting that it's okay for a Christian to marry someone who is not a Christian, but acknowledging that two people who are married don't always maintain the same priorities. They may get married, and then one get saved, or two Christians may be married, and one backslide. Either way, Paul says that the believer should stay with the unbeliever, unless the unbeliever chooses to depart, in which case, okay, they didn't want to live for God, and they weren't willing to share their life with someone who was living for God, so, let them go. The believer is then free to be single, or to marry someone else.

Just an aside, I hope this doesn't sound like bashing, but I know that the Roman Catholic church in particular is very picky about 'recognizing' marriages. I knew a young Catholic woman who fell 'in love' with a Protestant man; after several months of marriage, that her church would not recognize, these two realized that they were not nearly as much in love as they thought they were. Some time later, she fell in love again, but, this time, with a Roman Catholic man. They both wanted to get married in 'The Church.' The church insisted that before they could get married, she needed to to get the church to annul her first marriage. I'm not clear on how the church can annul a marriage that the church didn't recognize in the first place... They were only to happy to grant the annulment, it was really just a paperwork drill... I also knew a young man that was a born-again Christian that wanted to marry a Roman Catholic woman. She wanted to get married in 'The Church,' so he attended Catechism class and became a Roman Catholic. He told me he didn't understand what all the fuss was about; Christian is Christian, right? Sometimes people just make too much of some things. Jesus talked about choking on a gnat, and swallowing a camel... Of course, He was talking about the religious leaders of the day concentrating on making sure all the little things are right (and the little things should be right) and getting so focused on those things, that major problems slipped right past them. All too often, the religious leaders of today fall into the same traps.

Interfaith Relationships

There was a discussion on the radio this morning as I was driving in to work: It seems that a pastor has been suspended from his church because he participated in an interfaith event where he prayed with a group of people from other faiths (or other denominations--I'm not clear on the details, the discussion started before I got in the car). From what I heard, most of the callers didn't seem to think that the suspension made sense, but some did. Some of the callers didn't seem clear on the details, either, one caller commented something to the effect of, "Why would you invite someone to pray at your church when they aren't even praying to Jesus, so you know their prayers aren't going anywhere?" and the announcer reminded her that they weren't talking about at his church, that he was invited to speak at a public function.

Personally, I have to disagree with the caller, anyway. I mean, I understand her viewpoint, but I think she's taking the wrong approach. It's interesting, because we had a Muslim man visit our church yesterday, and our pastor asked him to come up and speak. Understand, that, first, this man and my pastor have been friends for a very long time. This is not the first time he's attended our service. He came, yesterday, to ask us to attend a dedication (a road in our town is being renamed for a former mayor [who is not Muslim, by the way]). Why did our pastor invite him to speak? Well, for starters, he wasn't talking about doctrine. Quite frankly, even if he was, he knows what we believe, and has enough respect for us, as a church, and for my pastor, as a friend, that he wouldn't have stepped outside of the common ground (I know the man well enough to be sure of that). Secondly, it's hard enough to get non-believers into the building to start with. If we treat the man as though he's not worthy to even talk to us (is any of us really worthy of anything anyway?), how in the world can we expect to see him saved? Yes, I understand that he already thinks that he is saved, and I have no intention of arguing that point with him.

Now, I will grant you, this sort of thing can be misconstrued into a belief that the pastor thinks that Muslim doctrine is okay. He doesn't, and I don't. I think that there are a whole lot worse things out there than being Muslim. I also think that if you don't have friends outside of your church, then you're not going to be able to bring people into your church. Apostle Paul told Timothy to "do the work of an evangelist." You can't do that if you are pushing people out the door.

I should also point out that we have a man in our church who was raised Muslim. I'm not going to go into a lot of details, but, at one point in his life, someone very close to him was very close to death. He had been taught that praying for a situation like that was a waste of time, that Allah wasn't going to lower himself to intervene in a situation like that, but, this was a person that he couldn't bear to lose. So he prayed. Hard. And he got an answer. The answer he got was, "You are praying to a god who cannot save." (BTW, we're not talking about hearing voices, here, we're talking about an understanding and a feeling that was just inarguable.) He felt like Saul on the road to Damascus, so sure that he had been serving God for so long, only to have incontrovertible evidence that God was not at all who he thought he was. This began a journey that ended with him finding Jesus real to his life.

So many times, we, as Christians, act like anyone who is not of Christ is evil. Let's be honest with ourselves: Any one of us is capable of evil, Christian or not. There are a lot of good people that have not accepted Jesus as Lord. We need to be patient with them, and compassionate towards them; setting the example, and encouraging them to follow.